Come to Collect
by orangeflavor
Summary: "Somehow, she figured indifference would hurt less on a face that wasn't Sasuke's. She discovers too late that she is wrong." - Post-war Inuzuka Kiba and Haruno Sakura. Reconciling what they need and what they deserve – namely each other.


Disclaimer: I own nothing, I make no money.

Author's Note: Not explicit, but some sexy times ahead.

Come to Collect

" _Somehow, she figured indifference would hurt less on a face that wasn't Sasuke's. She discovers too late that she is wrong."_ \- Post-war Inuzuka Kiba and Haruno Sakura. Reconciling what they need and what they deserve – namely each other.

The first time Kiba sees her at Shushu-ya, he wonders what the hell Haruno Sakura has to drink about. And then he reminds himself that Sasuke is enough to drive anyone to drink.

He hadn't originally pegged her for the sake type, but he supposes it's just one more thing she's learned from Tsunade, and really, there are worse habits to pick up.

She holds the shallow cup between her thumb and middle finger, her index finger resting along the edge, hovering just before her mouth, lips parted in anticipation (or maybe it's dread, he's not really sure, and doesn't think even she knows), and the slight curve of her wrist just before she downs the drink is somehow striking in the restaurant's dim light.

This is the exact moment that, years later, Kiba will recognize as his downfall.

"Need a partner?" He says it before he even realizes that he's sidled up beside her, elbows resting along the bartop in what might be languidness but really is a poor mask for exhaustion (it's always exhaustion, any shinobi could tell you that – and Sakura sees it just as well).

He's aware of what he must look like right now. Fresh off a mission, jacket torn at the shoulder, dried blood still caked along his temple, eyes red-rimmed and hazy, a smear of dirt along his jaw. He came straight here after Hokage Tower, bypassing home and family entirely, and if he thinks too hard about it, he'll realize that maybe that says something.

Maybe that says something about his priorities.

But Sakura is already sliding a cup his way, the sweet liquid sloshing over the edge just as he catches it, and when he lifts his fingers to his mouth to lick the sake from them, he catches the way her throat tightens and her lips thin into a harsh line.

This is the girl that used to get into ridiculous screaming matches with Ino on the front lawn of the academy. This is the girl that dedicated the whole of her adolescence to a boy who never even knew she existed, nor cared once he did. This is the girl who violently took her anger and insecurities out on a doting teammate, all too frequently.

But this is also the girl ( _woman_ , he corrects himself) who takes him home that night and slips beneath the sheets beside him, who grips his shoulders with bruising force, fingernails dragging along his skin, who swipes her tongue along his throat as she grinds her hips into his.

This is the girl who doesn't look at him when she finally cums, head thrown back with abandon as she rides him to completion.

When she kisses him, she tastes like sake, and he wonders if she knows that this too, is a mistake.

* * *

"What are _you_ doing here?" she asks accusingly, arms crossed as she shifts her weight to one hip.

Kiba twirls a kunai along his fingers and smirks back at her, his other hand shoving into his jacket pocket while Akamaru settles in the grass beside him. "Same as you, I'm sure." He rocks back on his heels and then forward in a teasing, casual manner. "Training."

He says it with a wink and Sakura has the sudden, unexplainable urge to bolt, right then and there. It would be a lie to say she hadn't imagined that mouth in a thousand more intimate places – but it would also be a lie to say she was willing to admit it aloud. And then she is filled with sudden horror at the thought that he could probably still smell himself between her legs. She presses her thighs together unconsciously at the thought.

She doesn't have long to think about it though, because then Naruto is running up to them, panting, waving hysterically. "Sorry I'm late!" he calls, stopping in front of them, and Sakura is all too relieved at the interruption.

She takes his elbow instantly and starts to steer him away. "It's fine, Naruto."

But Naruto digs his heels into the dirt and frowns down at her. "Hold up a sec." He flicks his gaze to Kiba, a crooked grin breaking over his face. "Hey, Kiba, want to spar with us?"

Kiba opens his mouth to answer, Akamaru lifting an interested ear at his feet.

"Hinata and Shino should be here shortly," Sakura cuts him off. "Let's not keep him from them." And then she is dragging Naruto away again. It seems to be a habit, she realizes, even when she does it unconsciously. Her grip loosens then.

Somehow, it feels wrong to be so rough with him now, to be so forceful. He has as broken a heart as hers and though she knows she should be gentle with him, she doesn't know how to be. She has always been fists first, and she doesn't think that will change so quickly.

When she glances back, she finds Kiba staring at her. It isn't accusing, or questioning, or even annoyed.

It stays with her all the same, because she recognizes that look.

Somehow, she figured indifference would hurt less on a face that wasn't Sasuke's.

She discovers too late that she is wrong.

* * *

"I thought you hated ramen," Kiba says as he sits down beside her.

Sakura is too annoyed and too tired to do anything but plant her chin in her palm and sigh as she leans against the table. "Naruto likes it though," she answers, as though that should explain anything.

It really doesn't, but Kiba figures if anything, she's not flinging punches at him and he thinks that has to count for something after all these years.

Funny how growing up does that. They weren't children anymore, that was plain enough, but somehow Kiba figured they'd have walked away from the war more violent, more brutal, than ever, and yet, here they were, sitting at Ichiraku's over steaming bowls of ramen, patiently waiting for Naruto (as though this place hadn't been leveled to the ground time and time again), each of them simply trying to fit themselves back into a life that doesn't seem to want to fit _them_ anymore.

Kiba figures it's one of the reasons he's latched – unreasonably – onto Sakura. Neither of them can go back to the way they were, but of all of them, they each seemed to be having the hardest time of it.

"Since when did you care what Naruto likes?" It's a pointedly cruel dig, he knows, but the way she sits up and glares at him is _something_ at least.

"Since when were you such a busybody?" she shoots back.

"Since I got busy with _your_ body." He waggles his eyebrows suggestively.

Sakura scoffs in disgust, but the faint twist of her lips encourages him.

"Honestly, though," he tries again, shuffling a bit closer to her in his seat. "What's up with you lately?"

Sakura eyes him silently a moment, fingers thrumming on the tabletop, and he wonders if maybe this is 'it', this is the moment that will make or break them – and he doesn't even know what 'they' are right now, but he's at least sure he doesn't want it to be 'nothing', because when he looks at her, he's pretty damn sure he sees 'something' (or maybe it sees him and he's just caught in the light like some dumbstruck animal – he's not too ashamed to argue the truth of that one) so he takes a breath and holds it and just stares.

Just waits.

Because 'anything' is better than 'nothing', at least where Sakura is concerned.

She levels a glare at him. "Go chase your tail, Inuzuka."

 _Well_ , 'fuck that' then.

Kiba rolls his eyes and moves to push himself from the table when Sakura grabs at his wrist. He looks down at her, brows raised.

" _God_ , I'm just joking, you idiot." She tugs on his wrist. "Sit."

He does, all too obediently he realizes.

Sakura doesn't remark on it though, instead releasing his hand to plant her elbow along the table and drop her chin into her palm again. "I just…feel bad, you know? For Naruto. I mean, after Pain, and Jiraiya, and…Sasuke…" she pauses, glancing at him out of her periphery, and if there's something she's expecting him to say, he doesn't know what it is, so he stays silent. Sakura licks her lips, her eyes trailing to her hands as they clasp unsurely in her lap. "I just…want to be there for him, you know? Like he always was with me."

For a moment, Kiba's sure some kind of genjutsu is at work, because he can't recall the last time Sakura was ever this open with him, and he's oddly taken by the image of her sitting here with her fists in her lap and her cutely creased brow and just the absolute _opposite_ of the Sasuke-obsessed teenager she used to be. He's sure there's still a little obsession left in her though, because she's started to keep her hair long again and she still looks for lightning in the sky and even when she doesn't mean it, she still mouths his name so tenderly that it'd be foolish to think she could ever fall out of love _that_ easily – and yet, she has not left Konoha to go look for him. He likes to think that's the difference between them.

He also likes to think she sees it, too.

"I don't know," she sighs, shrugging her shoulders. "I just figure…of all people, he could use a little kindness right now." She looks up at him, unsure, her lip caught between her teeth.

And he could kiss her right now, he really could. But then Akamaru is barking at his heels and distantly, he can hear Naruto calling in the distance, so he stuffs his hands into his jacket pockets and nudges her with an elbow. "Well, better late than never, I guess," he says, chuckling.

Sakura lets out a scoff, raising a fist threateningly, and when he flinches back out of genuine fear she actually bursts out laughing.

Kiba thinks it might be the best thing he's heard in a long, long time.

* * *

Sakura's eyes snap open to the disturbingly wet sensation of Kiba smearing his sweaty palm across her neck. "What the _hell_ , Inuzuka?" she shrieks, swatting him away and bolting upright.

Kiba collapses in a fit of hysterics along the grass beside her, and while her instinct is to end him – right then and there, painfully and without regret – she suddenly stops at the image of him laughing in the shade beside her. She stills, blinking out into the sun and then across the training grounds, where Naruto is still sparring with Sai, and Hinata is engaged with Shino just another field over.

She is instantly a genin again, and the tightness in her chest is unexpected, but also oddly familiar, and while the shade she's tucked herself under is still cool and her body still throbbing from her own recent sparring session, she has a moment – perhaps the very first since the start (or end) of the war – where nothing at all matters but the glint of light from the sun through the leaves overhead, her teammates' exhausted but enthusiastic hollers across the way, and she has never felt so achingly regretful as she suddenly is now.

But Kiba's snort of laughter beside her brings her back, and she remembers that they are children no longer (if they ever were, she thinks).

Years she will never get back and it is suddenly, inexplicably, painful beyond belief.

"Oh, if you could only see your face," he howls beside her, clutching his sides.

She turns to him silently, blinking back her disorientation. Kiba seems to sense something is amiss (maybe it's just _her_ , she wouldn't be surprised, she's been amiss for much too long now, truth be told) and he smothers his laughter somewhat, raising a brow her way and reclining back on his elbows.

"What's got your panties in a twist?"

And then she scowls, because there he is, and oh, how she's _not_ missed that (she has, she always will, but she's not ready to admit that just yet) and she finds herself rolling her eyes as she shoves him away and falls back along the grass with a groan. "My panties are none of your business."

"They could be," he offers with a bemused grin.

Her groan of disgust isn't near as convincing as she thinks it should be. "Why do you always find me when I'm not in the mood?"

"Why are you always 'not in the mood' when I find you?" Kiba counters, smirk thrown her way. He shrugs nonchalantly, wiggling his toes and watching in abject fascination.

Sakura has to consciously hold back another eye roll. And then she sighs, a half-laugh, half-sob. "You're so…"

"Charming?"

"I was going to say 'hopeless'."

"Ah, but you didn't." He folds his arms behind his head and smiles at her, sharp-toothed and innocent all at once. "So I'm not."

Sakura opens her mouth to say something, and then stops. Because he's right, and it's jarring, and before she can question what she's doing she's reaching for his shirt, her hand fisting in the material.

Kiba splutters a moment, his arms coming from behind his head, and she's looking at him so intently and they both just still, lying on the grass beneath a tree on the edge of the training grounds.

She doesn't know when he suddenly became _that person_. The kind of person who walks into walls just to make her laugh, and who offers the rest of his ramen, even though he's still hungry, and who uselessly argues medical knowledge with her, already knowing he's wrong, simply because he knows she's passionate about that shit and sometimes she just needs to _talk_ and be indisputably, unquestionably, _right_ about something.

But he's also the kind of person who would wipe his own sweat on her to wake her from a nap and that thought alone is enough to remind her exactly who Kiba is and who he's not.

She releases the fistful of shirt she's been holding and pushes at his shoulder. "Just…go away." She turns from him, sighing as she closes her eyes beneath the shade.

In the silence that follows, she thinks she hears him breathe, but it's much too heavy and pointed to convince her he hasn't been staring at her this _entire time_ so she almost gets up to leave herself when he finally moves.

Kiba sits up, and out of her periphery she can see him swiping a finger along the ground, writing something in the dirt at his feet. And then he is standing, wiping his hands along his pants with one last look her way, before leaving.

Sakura straightens up and leans over to read what he wrote. She frowns at the words, reaching for a rock, a stick, _anything_ – finally settling on Kakashi's copy of Icha Icha in the bag not far from her – and _beaming_ it at Kiba as he runs away. It hits him in the back of the knee and his howl of pain as he crumples to the ground is deeply satisfying to Sakura, her own laugh bellowing forth.

In the dirt, the words 'Sasuke wears girls' underwear' sits like an immortal reminder.

* * *

It's easy to pick her out in the crowd now. Her scent has stayed with him, even when he has been washed from her flesh, even when days have passed, even when his nose is muddled by ramen and sake and _him_.

Sasuke has always smelt like burnt light.

He has never liked the scent, even more so on her, and not because he ever thought of Sakura in any way other than platonic (not seriously, at least), but because burnt light wasn't something he ever felt should linger. A flash, and then gone. An instant flare, a brilliant second of illumination, but always momentary.

Sakura was like wood. Anchored, rooted, solid beneath your touch.

Somehow it always felt wrong to imagine her branches reaching for Sasuke's sun (there was always an eclipse between them, and its name was Itachi).

Sakura had stayed where Sasuke had left, and Kiba figures she'd have recognized what that meant at this point, but she has always been too brave with her affections.

It did her more harm than good, and Kiba doesn't have to be in love with her to see _that_.

He doesn't have to be in love with her to see many things, like the way her smile draws along her lips in a practiced, stilted manner. Or the way she barely touches her ramen. Or the way she excuses herself from the group, her fellow shinobi hardly taking notice, instead laughing at another of Naruto's comments.

"You okay?" he asks her, stopping her in the hallway on her way to the restroom.

She looks up at him, her face a haunt, like a memory he used to know but cannot place.

And then she sighs, rubs a hand down her face, and drops back to the wall, leaning her head back with a groan. "What now, Inuzuka?"

He frowns, hands shoving into his pockets. "You don't look too good, Haruno."

She raises one incredulous brow. "Yeah? And what's it to you, huh?"

"You saw Sasuke."

She shuts up then, her mouth clamping tightly closed.

He cocks his head at her. "And yet…he hasn't come back with you."

She narrows her eyes at him, pushing her weight from the wall. "What the fuck do you want?"

He sighs, eyes glancing down, and then back up at her. He shrugs, and he hopes it looks as indifferent as he intends, but if it doesn't, he figures there's no help anyway so what does it matter. "Are you okay?" he asks again.

He actually means it, genuinely cares, because she's a teammate. Fuck the actual 'teams', she's a fellow shinobi, and a friend, and he remembers how, naked and flushed, she curled along her side on the bed beside him when the filtered light of dusk had reached her bedroom window and he had hoped to _God_ he wouldn't regret this (he doesn't, even still, but he stays up some nights wondering if she does).

Something snaps in her then, because she's suddenly grabbing him by the collar and shoving him back against the wall. She snarls up at him. "Stop asking after me, Inuzuka. You don't have that right. It takes more than a lousy fuck to get there."

Thing is, while Sakura has always been fists first, so has Kiba, and he's not entirely sure if she meant to get this close but in the end, he figures it doesn't matter, because when he surges forward and kisses her, she doesn't haul out and punch him – which is half what he expects to happen.

Instead, she tightens her fists at his collar, muffles a pointless protest against his tongue, and when he grabs at her hips and drags her the rest of the way to him, she arches her back in a way that tells him she doesn't really believe it was ever a 'lousy fuck' between them.

She groans at the way he sucks at her tongue, and doesn't resist when he turns them around to press her into the wall instead, one knee coming up to push between her thighs.

This time, she doesn't taste like sake, but he's still not sure this isn't a mistake, and when he breaks away from her and she pulls him back, latching onto his throat, he mumbles a barely coherent "You okay?"

Because he still fucking cares. And she's still his friend. And even when he doesn't understand why, he needs to _know_ she's okay, because everything else can wait, even this – even her body against his and her breath in his mouth – as long as she's _okay_.

"Shut up," she grumbles into his skin, and then bites down.

He doesn't need to be told twice, and sometime during the night, the scent of burnt light leaves her.

* * *

"So what'd he say?"

Sakura glances at him beside her, pulling her hood closer to her cheeks and huffing a breath of cold air out into the room. Outside, it is just beginning to snow, and they are huddled in a makeshift room far too north of Konoha. But she has never been one to turn down the Hokage, and a mission's a mission. Even one with Kiba.

Kiba blows hot air into his hands and gazes out the window, waiting for her answer. Akamaru snoozes behind him, curled into a ball.

Sakura blinks ahead at the frosted window pane. "What'd _who_ say?" she asks, sighing in exasperation, mostly because she knows already, but she's just too tired of being transparent.

He nudges her with an elbow as they squat along the floor, waiting for the snow to die down before they head out again. "Sasuke," he answers. "The last time you saw him. Is he coming back for you or what?"

And really, she should have known this would come up eventually. Because when had Inuzuka Kiba ever been tactful?

Sakura frowns, a harsh line creasing her lips. "That's none of your business."

"He's still on his 'pilgrimage of redemption' and all that shit?"

And oh, how she'd like to snap back at him with something equally acerbic but the thing is – he's right. So she bites her lip in silence.

Kiba lifts a brow her way, and the sharp quirk of his lip is somehow insanely attractive at the same time that it's infuriating.

"I'll take that as a 'yes'," he laughs, glancing back to the window.

Sakura huffs. "He's trying to make things right."

"By running away?"

"By atoning."

"Funny," Kiba chuckles humorlessly, eyes sharpening as they gaze outside into that pure, untouched snow. "I always figured you had to, you know, _stick around_ for whatever it was you were atoning for."

Sakura shifts in her coat, because part of her is cold, and part of her is heated, and there's this chaos in her limbs and her bones and her blood and she doesn't know how to release it in anything other than fists but then – but then who was she angry with, really?

Maybe Kiba. Probably Sasuke. Most certainly herself.

Angry for loving that which leaves her. And angry for a lot more that she's isn't particularly proud of, like when she first cried over Sasuke, or when she wrapped her arms around him in a futile hope to keep him that first time he ever left the village, or when she had turned her back to him in ignorance, thinking she meant enough to him _not_ to kill her, or when he had touched his finger to her forehead and promised her he'd return and yet he still…still walked away.

She's angry about a lot of things, and yet, what she figures she _should_ be angry about – like the way Kiba waggles his eyebrows suggestively, or the way he casually insults her teenage pining, or the way he barks a laugh every time she threatens him with violence – these are the things she's come to know like breathing, like inevitability. And she's been so tired of being angry that it just doesn't make sense anymore to let that kind of shit fester.

Especially when it all seems to feel right, when he knows her so well and so intimately - every bone and freckle and scar, every crack and fissure of her fucked up life.

No, it doesn't anger her, she realizes suddenly. Rather, it terrifies her.

"He hasn't done right by _you_ , at least, that's for sure." Kiba mumbles, arms crossing tighter over his chest.

Sakura blinks at him. "Why should you care?" she asks breathlessly, and maybe thoughtlessly, because she should know by now that Kiba is a pack animal by nature – he takes care of his own, he doesn't know how to _not_ care – but she's hoping maybe she got it wrong, maybe this is more than that and _fuck_ , what if this is history repeating itself?

"I don't care," Kiba says as he shrugs, and he says it so nonchalantly that she thinks for a wild, blinding second that he really doesn't, and that familiar anger is suddenly bitter on her tongue, but the tang of disappointment is even stronger and before she can answer (maybe with fists, it's all she knows, really) he turns to her and smirks.

"But you should care," he says. "How he treats you. And what you deserve." Kiba shrugs again, the fur of his collar bunching around his cheeks and he has never looked so innocently endearing as he does now. "You should care," he whispers, eyes drifting back to the window.

She stares at him for a long time, long enough that he begins to fidget, and then he's raising a finger to the glass and smudging some words through the frost. He sits back on his heels when he's done, smiling triumphantly.

Sakura slowly blinks back into awareness, and when she takes a look at the window, her eyes landing along the words 'Sasuke wets the bed' it's just as easy to laugh as it is to violently shove him in the shoulder, which she does, even as she sulks dramatically.

Kiba loses his balance and sprawls along the floor, holding his ribs with deafening laughter.

What isn't easy, though, is admitting how much she _wants_ him to care.

What isn't easy, is being brave with her affections when all bravery ever got her before was a broken heart.

Mostly because she's sure she can't survive another one.

* * *

"When will you be back?" he asks her, breath pooling in the hollow of her collar bone.

"Why?" she asks demurely, "Will you miss me much?" A teasing giggle leaves her as Sakura shifts beneath him on the bed, arms rising up to rest above her head. The sheet slips down, revealing her breasts with the motion, and Kiba's throat tightens at the sight, his breath raking through his lungs. When he blinks up at her, he catches the knowing smirk along her lips and narrows his eyes.

Pinning her in place with his hips along hers, he grabs at her wrists above her head and holds her there. "When will you be back?" he asks again, this time husky and demanding.

Sakura pushes against the restraint, and she wouldn't be Sakura if she didn't, but she's also not trying very hard. He knows this, because he also knows that he would never be able to hold her down if she didn't want it.

The thought alone tightens the coil of desire deep in his gut, and he grinds his hips into hers purposely. "Answer me," he whispers into her throat, nipping at the sweat-slicked skin there.

He can feel her sharp intake of breath beneath his tongue more than he can hear it, and he barely holds back the groan when she arches into him.

"You're only asking because of _this_ ," she breathes, chest heaving.

Kiba stills with his tongue against her throat, because something about the way she says it, like a desperate accusation, makes him question her intent. And he can't rightly tell if she's pointing it out because she wants it to be more, or because she's legitimately giving him an out.

An out of this maybe-something, no repercussions, no strings.

Because they don't just fuck anymore. Most days she sticks around, lazily outstretched on the bed beside him, the faint lip of the rising sun peeking through the window to land languidly along her hair, a thin sheen of sweat covering her bare form, the scent of him still lingering between her thighs, and here's the thing he won't admit aloud (or even to himself) – he's pretty sure he likes these quiet, ordinary moments far greater than the moments when he's inside her, and he's also equally sure that makes him insane.

Because Haruno Sakura snores. And she hits in her sleep. And he's woken up to a pool of drool on the pillow he's designated as hers now far too many times to ever believe he _wasn't_ insane for falling in love with her in spite of it all.

And he is, well and truly. He is in love with her. It takes him by such surprise though that he doesn't answer her for many long moments, long enough to make her furrow her brows up at him and still the rhythmic motion of her hips.

"Kiba?"

He buries his face in her neck and breathes her in, his fingers curling painfully tight around her wrists.

She winces. "Kiba." This time it's a warning.

And he needs one. He needs one right now more than anything because he bypassed all the red flags long ago and he can't stop thinking of her _laugh_ , and the way she crosses her arms when she's nervous, and how she taps her left foot when she's lying and how he fucking _knows_ all these things and this is _not_ sexy, this is _not_ about his tongue in her mouth and her legs around his waist and the way she howls his name like he is the best and worst thing in the world at that very moment.

And this is _not_ love (at least he tells himself).

Because if it was, it wouldn't be so easy to lie:

"What else could I want from you?" He bites down on her neck then, so she can't make out the break in his voice, and so that maybe he can drown out her heartbeat before it drowns _him_.

Take a bite and swallow it down.

It's just hunger, after all. He'll be himself once he's had his fill.

Kiba pushes her knees up roughly, her wrists now free, and he releases her bruised neck to go lower, planting himself between her legs.

Sakura looks down at him with a sharp intake of breath, something hazy in her eyes that is far more cautious than lust.

But he doesn't let her answer, doesn't let her berate him or chastise him or demand more of an explanation – he doesn't let her because then he might have to face the truth.

The truth that this was well past hunger.

* * *

What they don't tell you at the academy, is that to be _kunoichi_ is to be more than _shinobi_ , if only for the simple fact that others will ask more of you.

That _men_ will ask more. Or demand rather, as Sakura has experienced, with rancid breath and bruising fingers.

There are missions, and then there are _missions_ , and Sakura loves her village. So she will be a kunoichi, even when it takes from her.

Often, she comes back from such missions and sits at the counter of Yamanaka's flower shop, wanting to trail her fingers along the delicate stalks but also mindful of the blood (or worse) still caked into the creases of her palms. So she keeps her hands curled in her lap instead, and some days, Ino offers her a flower – a tender, knowing look gracing her features (knowing as only kunoichi know).

Sakura wipes her sweaty palms along her thighs, those thighs that have broken necks just as greedy fingers were inching up her skirt – or higher – though this she will never tell Kiba (he knows, has always known, but he has learned to discern her scent through the traces of other men).

When Sakura takes the flower, Ino reaches a hand to the back of her head and presses her forehead against hers. A single slow intake of breath. And then release.

Hiding kunais in their kimono sleeves as easily as they hide death behind their smiles. This is what it means to be kunoichi.

It means gripping flower stems with bloodied palms.

It means to always follow delicacy with brutality.

But Sakura has never been delicate, though she can look it well enough when the mission calls for it and she has never detested the talent until now. So when she comes back from her latest mission, walking up to the Konoha gate just after dusk, when the haze of deadened light is fleeting through the trees and the bugs are awakening in the dew-touched grass and she wonders if it is not yet dark enough to hide the finger marks along her throat – she finds Kiba.

He sits along the high wall, one leg brought up with his knee against his chest while the other leg dangles over the ledge.

Sakura stills, hand bunching in her shirt collar, eyes blinking rapidly. In a second of irrational panic she wonders if he will miss her in the near-light, if she only stays very, _very_ still.

"I can see you, Haruno, I'm not blind."

A useless hope, she finds.

Sakura edges toward the gate hesitantly, glancing at the village beyond, her fist slowly releasing her collar. There is still a hand at her throat though – always will be. And she doesn't know how to tell him that.

Because he will never know like kunoichi know.

And she never wants him to.

Kiba jumps down from the wall and walks over to her.

She stands blinking at him rapidly, her breath caught in her throat. Her shirt is torn at the hem, speckles of blood splattered along her stomach (not hers), and her hair is a tangled mess drawn back into a hasty ponytail.

They stare at each other for many moments. They each know they can never divulge mission secrets, and they each know that he will never ask her to. But still, his eyes rove over her form, lingering at the marks on her throat and the fists she keeps clenched at her sides. He shoves his hands into his pockets and sighs, eyes glancing down as he digs a booted toe in the dirt at his feet.

"Welcome home."

Sakura releases the breath she hadn't even known she was holding, and suddenly, unbidden tears are at her eyes, because she hates that this man still welcomes her home when she can still feel another's touch on her thighs, on her breasts, on her throat – when she hates that she is good at what she does and what she does is to fool men.

And then to bleed them.

Distantly, she wonders if this is also what she's doing to Kiba – if this is simply what she is best at, and maybe being a medic nin was a farce in the end, because it makes killing easier when you can balance the scales by saving others' lives.

Bullshit, she finally realizes. One will always outweigh the other. And her hands will always be dirty.

 _She_ will always be dirty.

In a vain attempt at comfort (maybe for herself, or maybe for him, for what he will never know), she smiles shakily up at him.

Kiba scrunches his nose, eyes lifting to just over her shoulder, so that he isn't looking her in the eye when he says it: "You should probably take a shower after you've reported to Rokudaime."

Sakura's smile wilts instantly, and something sinks inside her at the sudden realization.

Kiba seems to realize it at the same time, because when his eyes go wide and he reaches toward her, his words tumbling over his lips ( "Sakura, I didn't…") –

She flinches.

The air seems to splinter between them as he halts in his motion toward her, his hand held still in the air.

Sakura releases a disbelieving laugh, half-choke, half-delirium.

Kiba's hand pulls back as he curses beneath his breath.

Thing is though, she doesn't need him to remind her she's dirty. She already knows this. As all kunoichi know.

She's just never regretted it until now.

* * *

She comes to him, still, but there's a distance now that wasn't there before. Even when their sweat-slicked bodies are pressed tightly together, his arms around her waist, her hands in his hair, his senses full of her touch and her taste and her urgency – she has never been farther from him.

It's in the way she doesn't stay after sex anymore, and the way her eyes flit to the other side of the street when they pass each other in the village, and the way she always sits two seats away from him when they all go out to eat at Ichiraku's.

It makes him bolder, angrier, spiteful even, when her flesh is beneath his hands and his tongue is in her mouth.

What's worse is that she doesn't seem to mind the roughness, and distantly, Kiba begins to understand that she thinks she _deserves_ it.

After the war, it was easy to think they deserved a lot of things, but never each other.

So instead, they bruise each other with want and keep their hearts tucked securely between their ribs.

And then one day Kiba suddenly realizes his favorite color is pink. Not pink like her hair, or cherry blossoms, or the faint blush she still won't admit to when he trails a finger tenderly along her collar bone, or any of that flowery bullshit he once used to associate with her.

No.

It's pink like the hickey just above her collar, the one he purposely leaves because angry Sakura is the best Sakura (even if that means she's angry at him) and maybe that thought makes him suck all the more harder.

Pink like the enflamed skin of his cheek when she slaps him for leaving the mark where others can see it, perhaps a little too hard (always a little too hard because she doesn't know her own strength – never has, never will – especially with him).

Pink like her delicately finessed tongue (in striking contrast to her recklessly blunt words).

Pink like the parts of her she shares with no one, except him – when he's trailing kisses down her stomach, and his name is a strangle of air in her hoarse throat, and her forceful grip in his hair is pushing his head down lower, lower, lower, until – _ah_.

Sakura has always liked it a little rough and this she also shares with no one – except him.

Kiba's favorite color is pink because Sakura's favorite time of day is just after dusk, when the sun has only the sliver of a breath left in this world and the haze of light creeping through her window lands in slants upon her sheets and her face and her hair, and she sighs beneath the dying light, her whole room awash in that frustratingly, _agonizingly_ familiar pink.

Pink like the curve of her lips when she smiles at him.

And he knows it's her favorite time of day, not because he loves her (he more than thinks it now, he _knows_ it) and this information simply comes to him through some magical tether connecting their 'souls' and laying her bare to him.

No, he knows this because he _fucking pays attention_. He pays attention to how she hates cucumbers, and how she always checks the locks twice, and how she prefers her left hand for chopsticks and her right for kunais, and how this very moment, when he's lying on the bed with the sheets pulled up to his waist, and she sits on the edge with her back to him while she buttons her blouse – he pays attention to how she stiffens when he reaches for her hip.

"Stay," he says.

She shakes her head, her face still turned from him, and she moves to get off the bed. He catches her wrist, sitting up with the motion.

He feels her pulse point beneath his thumb, eyes fluttering shut, and he inhales deeply.

But she has no scent.

Kiba opens his eyes to the sudden recognition. No wood, no roots, no deep, rich soil (she has always been that solid anchor, even when he didn't know it). Not even burnt light. And he'd never thought he'd hope for _that_.

Sakura smells like water.

Like drowning.

She pulls her hand from his grip and starts for the door. "I'm not your dog, Inuzuka."

From where he sits on the bed, he can see her shoulders shaking, even as the door shuts behind her.

Sometimes, he thinks the war never left them.

* * *

From across the street, Sakura watches as Kiba enters Shushu-ya, the doors of the restaurant swinging closed behind him.

"Aren't you joining him?" Naruto asks beside her as they halt on the sidewalk.

Sakura blinks surprised eyes at him. "What?"

Naruto juts his chin in the restaurant's direction. "Kiba. Aren't you joining him?"

Sakura's mouth dips open a moment, and then promptly shuts. She narrows her eyes in suspicion. "Why would I?"

Naruto raises incredulous brows at her and crosses his arms. "You two aren't exactly subtle. And that's coming from _me_."

Sakura swallows thickly, her back straightening. "I don't know what you're talking about."

Sighing, Naruto uncrosses his arms and thumbs his nose before shoving his hands into his pockets. "Sure, Sakura, whatever you say," he mumbles as he turns to leave.

She catches him by the sleeve, a little too harshly than she intends but then that's no surprise these days, and he stumbles to a halt.

"What is _that_ supposed to mean?" she grinds out, almost accusatory.

Naruto rolls his eyes. "You two," he explains, motioning between her and the restaurant where Kiba disappeared. "Whatever it is you guys have going on. Love, or almost-love, or something like it, or maybe just fucking or…whatever! I don't know. I'm talking about _that_."

In the end, she knows it's useless to pretend, and honestly, part of her is relieved to not have to anymore, but that doesn't make it any easier to hear – not when Kiba's touch still ghosts across her skin and every moment away is a reminder that she could never really be his.

Grinding her teeth behind her frown, Sakura yanks Naruto closer by his sleeve and glares up at him. "Whether I 'love' him or not, is none of your business, Naruto. So back the fuck off," she seethes.

He stares at her for a long time, long enough to truly begin to unnerve her, because he's never quite looked at her like that before.

Almost…disappointed.

Her mouth tips open in uncertainty and then something changes in his face, his features hardening, his mouth thinning into a tight line. He tears his arm from her grip and steps closer. She very nearly steps back.

"You know what your problem is, Sakura?" He raises a finger in the air to jut at her. "When it comes to the things that count, the things that _really_ matter, you're a fucking coward."

It's surreal, to stand there listening to Naruto talk to her like that. Surreal because he never has before, and because the words hurt so much, and because if she were honest with herself, she'd have to acknowledge that he was right.

But not yet.

She isn't ready for that.

"Want to know why you and Sasuke never worked out?" he nearly spits at her.

And this is where Sakura shrinks in on herself.

Not this part of her, please, no. Not _this_.

Naruto doesn't let up, stepping closer. This time, she does step back.

"You and Sasuke are exactly the same. Too fucking scared." He shakes his head, his eyes shifting down, and suddenly Sakura realizes that this _hurts_ him, and the thought is so jarring and so uncomfortable and she can't bear to stand here in this skin of hers, listening to these words, and looking at this man, and she wants to bolt, right then and there, put boots to dirt and _run_ and never come back, never have to listen to this and never –

But this is where she realizes he's right.

This is where she stops running, or he will always be right.

"I'm not afraid," she whispers timidly, her throat closing around the words.

Naruto sighs and shoves his hands back into his pockets, watching her with discerning eyes. "Yeah, you are. You're absolutely terrified."

Sakura swallows thickly and licks her lips. "I'm not afraid to love, Naruto." She hopes it comes out more sure than she feels. And then she thinks back to years ago, when she had wrapped her arms around Sasuke and _begged_ him not to leave, begged him to stay because she loved him, she fucking _loved him_ , and sometimes she regrets it but she knows – she's never been afraid to love.

Naruto didn't know what he was talking about.

And then he laughs. So abrupt and incredulous and unexpected that Sakura almost jumps. "That's not what I'm talking about, you idiot."

For an instant, for the flare of a second, Sakura's fists curl instinctively at the casual insult (a remnant of old times better off forgotten but never easier off forgotten).

"You're used to loving, Sakura, that's not the issue. Being in love is easy for you. But _being loved_ is not, never has been. Not since we were children and _definitely_ not now. And that's what scares you. _That's_ why you're a coward."

Sakura stares at him, watching as his eyes drift down to the sidewalk where he slides his scuffed shoe back and forth across the cement. There's something tragic and nostalgic all at once to the motion, to the resigned sigh that leaves his body. "Don't make the same mistake twice," he breathes, barely loud enough to be heard.

She pulls a sharp breath between her teeth.

Naruto finally looks up. "You deserve to be loved, Sakura. Whatever made you think otherwise?"

Sakura closes her eyes and breathes deep, her throat tight with her slowly unhinging control, her body flushed with remembrance, her nails digging half-moons into her palms as her hands curl into fists.

 _"Need a partner?"_

From the very beginning, it was always her choice.

She only had to take his hand.

Sakura opens her eyes to see Naruto smiling sheepishly at her. She reaches for him, grasps for his face, plants a smacker on his cheek and then runs.

Only this time, not _away_.

She bursts through Shushu-ya's doors and hones in on Kiba at the bar. He looks up at her entrance, chopsticks stilling in his hand, his sake cup empty beside him.

Sakura makes her way to him and he's already leaning back in his chair with caution when she stops just before him, eyes intent.

"You love me," she says without hesitance.

Kiba takes a moment to stare dumbly at her, and then he lets out a single, amused snort, turning to refill his sake cup silently.

"You love me," she repeats, this time like a demand.

Kiba stills with his sake halfway to his mouth, and Sakura sees a pattern here, grows bolder. She steps closer, face inches from his.

Kiba lifts a brow her way and places the cup back on the bartop, eyes following it. He fingers the edge of it a moment before he sighs in what sounds like defeat. "And if I do?"

He isn't even pretending anymore, and she wonders how she ever did herself.

Sakura's chest is suddenly tight at the admission, but she schools herself into passivity. "Then okay."

"What?" Kiba finally looks back up at her.

"I said 'okay'."

Another laugh, this one tinged with desperation, and she knows the sound intimately, too intimately, and she doesn't like how it sounds coming from him. She can't help the slight frown that graces her lips.

"You asked me once if I needed a partner," she says.

Kiba nods slowly at her, eyes unblinking.

Her face softens, her lips tilting up into something that might have been called yearning if it weren't so determined. "I've come to collect."

She can see the indecision on his face – that beautiful, fierce, _annoyingly_ endearing face. Her chest heaves with her exhilaration, and any moment she thinks she might just crack and float away, some fissure of her mind crumbling beneath the moment and she will be _buried_ beneath it, this tangled mess of emotion that claws at her heart – this dangerous, glorious upheaval.

But she isn't afraid any longer.

Kiba stares at her intently, his brows furrowed, and there's a moment where he inches toward her, and she is sure he means to reach for her, but then he stops, his face pinching into something painful and he lets out a hoarse "Why?"

And the answer is easy.

Looking down at his food, Sakura smiles as she reaches a finger toward his plate and writes something in the thick sauce at the edge. She wipes her hand clean on his napkin as he reads it, and in the moment of dread when he blinks up at her, and silence pervades their conversation, and her breath is halted in her throat – when she understands that no matter his answer, she is a better person for having loved him – Sakura finally feels the wetness dotting her eyes.

But the salt sting of tears is short-lived, because then Kiba is rising from his seat, his chair nearly toppling over with the force of it, and then his hands are on her cheeks and his chest is pressed to hers and his lips are finally, _finally_ crashing into hers.

Written messily on his plate are the words 'Because I love you back'.

This time, when he asks her to stay, she does.


End file.
